


change places

by coffeesuperhero



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Avengers Fest, Bodyswap, F/M, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Stark Experiments Gone Awry, for science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane and Thor get in the way of a Stark experiment. This goes about as well as you might expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	change places

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer** : All characters belong to Disney, Marvel Comics, & various subsidiaries. This is not for profit, only for the fun of avengersfest.

Jane wakes up the morning after Tony's failed telepathy experiment feeling a little out of sorts, not unlike the fuzzy-headed feeling she used to have during grad school, all those nights she worked on her dissertation until the sun came up and then pushed on through the day like a zombie. It's dark, but she can feel Thor's comforting weight next to her, though weirdly they seem to have switched sides of the bed in their sleep. She pushes the thought away and sits up, yawning and stretching. Her body feels out of sorts, stiff in all the wrong places as she runs a hand through her hair and climbs out of bed, then reaches for one of Thor's t-shirts and heads for the bathroom. She tugs on the shirt, but it feels strangely tight across her chest and her arms, and when she brings her hands up, her body _feels_ different: her chest is flatter-- much, much flatter-- and she seems to be taller or wider or maybe both, she considers, as she bangs into the doorjamb on the way into the bathroom and swears, her voice low and growly in her ears. 

"Wait a minute," she says, but it's Thor's voice that she hears, not her own, and she gulps. In her mind, she replays Doctor Banner's warnings to Tony about the dangers of untested gamma radiation and shakes her head, hoping she's wrong about all of this. "Oh. Oh no." 

With abundant reluctance, Jane reaches for the light switch in the bathroom, closing her eyes for just a minute, willing this to be a nightmare, but then her eyes are open and the person staring back at her in the mirror is definitely, absolutely not Jane Foster. 

It's Thor.

"Oh my god," she says slowly, staring at Thor's reflection, hardly believing what her eyes-- well, Thor's eyes-- are telling her. She blinks. Still Thor. She blinks again. Still awake, still not having a nightmare, and still Thor. "Oh my god," she says again, touching her face. "But if I'm in here..."

She runs back out to the bedroom and slaps on the lights. 

" _Thor_ ," she says, and Jane watches through Thor's eyes as her own body sits up in bed, rubbing at her eyes blearily. "Oh wow, okay, that's really weird." 

"Jane?" Thor says, blinking curiously at her before looking down and then back up in vaguely amused astonishment. "Hold a moment. What is this?" 

"I think," she says, "we need to find Tony. _Now_." 

\+ 

They have a meeting to discuss what to do about this situation. Thor is completely unconcerned, while Jane continues to be extremely disconcerted: the things she used to be able to walk under without a second thought are hitting her right in the face, and she's had to pee really badly for about three hours but she's been avoiding it because she has absolutely no idea how that's supposed to work out now, so she's trying not to squirm too much while Erik and Tony and Bruce throw out idea after idea. She makes a few suggestions of her own, briefly explaining the theoretical principles behind them, and Tony stops his usual spastic pacing and looks curiously at her for a second, tapping his chin with a laser pointer. 

"Sorry, could you just add something to that about Mjolnir or bilgesnipe or Glory Glory Realm Eternal?" Tony says. "Otherwise it's just too weird, because everything you just said made sense to me."

"I'm a scientist no matter what body I'm in," Jane says defensively, but then she groans at the sound of her words in Thor's voice. "God, you're right, this is really strange." 

"It certainly is," Erik agrees, but he's not looking at her-- or rather, he is, just not the body her consciousness is currently inhabiting. The others follow his gaze, including Jane, and she finds to her dismay that Thor has not only totally tuned out on the entire discussion, but is sitting at the table, his-- her-- hands around her breasts, moving them around in utter fascination. 

"Will you stop," Jane hisses, and Thor looks over at her, a confused expression on his--well, her-- face. 

"What?" he asks. "They were uncomfortable in this-- what is it, again?" 

"A _bra_ ," she whispers. "And I know, okay, but you can't just... Thor, you can't adjust my breasts in front of everyone." 

"Why not?" he queries, frowning thoughtfully, cupping her breasts as he does. "Jane, your breasts are magnificent." 

She puts her head down on the table. "Go on without me," she sighs. 

+

Two days later, they are no closer to a solution: they've even recreated the original experiment down to the smallest details, and still nothing. 

Thor has adapted fairly well to living in her body, and for the most part she's doing okay herself, though she suspects that Darcy is keeping a running tally of all the times she's bumped into something because she forgets that she's taller now. 

Meanwhile, she's kind of enjoying the super strength thing. When Tony wouldn't stop uselessly chattering in the lab yesterday, she reached over and picked him up and held him off the ground until he stopped talking. That had been pretty fantastic. 

There are other pros to this switch, too. In fact, if she's going to miss anything about walking around as Thor all day, it's his body's immortal ability to stay up later and work longer without being tired or even all that hungry. Her productivity has been off the charts now that she needs less sleep: she's written two articles, built four new pieces of equipment, and made countless notes and observations.

But she's starting to get a little worried, because nothing they've tried is working, and she's still scheduled to present a paper in Munich next week on her revolutionary findings regarding the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Her little niche in the scientific community is small, too small to buy Donald Blake, Jane Foster's handsome home-schooled research assistant, for more than two seconds, and no way is she sending Thor to do this presentation while his mind is still hanging out in her body, because no matter how much she drills him on the facts and principles behind her research, he _will_ find a way to talk about the branches of Yggdrasil and the Nine Realms, and she doesn't even want to _think_ about that right now. 

On day three, they try seven more solutions with a failure rate of one-hundred percent, and Jane slumps down in a chair in the lab, frustrated. 

"Now what?" she asks. 

"I hate to say this," Tony says finally, frowning, "but I'm out of ideas, here." 

"In that case, my friends, I suggest that we go to Asgard," Thor says. "Surely my people can offer some answers to this problem." 

"Fantastic," Tony remarks. "I am overdue for a vacation. Bruce, I hope you have some Bermuda shorts and a decent camera, because this whole visit is going up on StarkTube." 

\+ 

"Do I need to wear your armor tomorrow?" Jane asks, frowning at the tidy pile of Thor's armor and other accoutrements. "Because I have no idea how to put any of that on." 

"I would be glad to show you," he offers, stepping over to her, his hands pulling at her shirt. 

"This just keeps getting weirder," she says, as Thor helps her undress. 

"It is a bit strange," he laughs. "But you were correct when you said that you are a scientist, no matter the body you are in, and you are still the Jane Foster that I know and love." 

"Thank you," she says, and when he tugs gently on her arm to pull her down for a kiss, she closes her eyes and sighs. "That's what it feels like to kiss me? I'm a better kisser than I thought." 

"Have I ever complained?" Thor says, grinning. "I must admit, Jane, that I have some curiosities about more than just kissing." 

"Well," she says, smiling slowly, "I think maybe we could experiment, you know, for...science." 

"For science!" he says joyfully, pulling her close, which overbalances them and sends them both toppling onto the bed. 

"That's new," she says, blinking at the odd new feeling of the way this body reacts to the closeness of her own. "And a little strange." 

"Too strange?" 

"I think we can make it work," Jane says, leaning down to kiss him. "You know. For science." 

\+ 

Travel to Asgard is significantly easier now that the Bifrost has been repaired. She wonders for a moment if Heimdall will react to Thor's shouts for transport, coming as they are from a totally different body, but after a second the light spirals down to meet them and they're off, she and Thor and Bruce and Tony, journeying to Asgard in the hope that someone there will know what to do about this situation.

"Come, let us go and greet my mother and the Allfather," Thor says happily, waving them down the bridge toward the city gates. Bruce and Tony walk a little behind them, bickering convivially about some unrelated experiment, while Thor strides along beside her, walking quickly to match his pace to her own. 

"You're not embarrassed?" Jane asks, nervously fidgeting with a spot on the armor she's wearing. 

"Why should I be?" he says curiously, glancing up at her. 

"Well, you know, you're not yourself," Jane points out. 

"I am more beautiful than I was when I left, it is true," he jokes, winking, and she shakes her head. 

"This is just not really how I pictured Meet The Parents," she says, flustered. "Also I don't know how you walk with this cape. It keeps getting caught on things." 

"Do not worry so," Thor says. He kisses her hand, but the gesture just isn't quite the same when she has to look down at herself doing it. "All will be well. I am certain that our magicians will have some answers to this problem." 

"I hope so," she sighs. 

\+ 

The queen greets them when they arrive at the palace. "Welcome home, my son," Frigga says, and Jane steadies herself, ready to explain that the queen really needs to be hugging the person who looks like Jane instead of the person who looks like Thor, but then Frigga walks right past her and embraces the correct person after all, and Jane looks over, astonished. 

"You knew?" Jane asks. 

"We are not unfamiliar with this type of thing here," Frigga explains. She keeps one arm around Thor and reaches out to grasp one of Jane's hands. "You are most welcome here, Jane Foster, and you are even lovelier than my son has labored to explain to us." 

Jane can feel her face heating, and she wonders what Thor looks like when he blushes-- she's never seen him do it. "Thank you," she manages to say. 

"I know you are eager to begin your work," Frigga continues, squeezing her hand one last time, "But first you must come and greet the Allfather." 

\+ 

Asgard is more beautiful than Thor had ever been able to describe, and they have opportunities for scientific study that she could never even have dreamed up. At first, Jane had been so consumed with finding a solution for this unfortunate predicament that it had barely occurred to her to try, but after a day of trying to follow the Asgardians' strange blend of science and magic, she decides to do some exploring on her own. Her wandering takes her to one of Asgard's grand observatories, and though she is surrounded by entirely unfamiliar equipment, it only takes her a few moments of curious study to puzzle out how to work one of the larger pieces. It's a telescope, but it's like nothing she's ever seen, literally: the view through it is so dazzling that she doesn't even hear the footsteps behind her until the telescope is jerked roughly away from her and she whirls around to find the Lady Sif standing in front of her. 

"Hey, what do you think you're doing?" Jane says, reaching out for the telescope but finding only a long sharp sword in its place. 

"I could ask you the same," Sif says. "For you are not Thor, that much I know." 

"I'm really not," Jane sighs. 

"I would like to know how you escaped," Sif says, the point of her sword perilously close, " _Loki_." 

"Whoa, whoa, wrong idea," Jane says, waving her hands in what she hopes is a conciliatory gesture. "I'm from Earth-- uh, Midgard. My name is Doctor Jane Foster, we met in New Mexico? You showed up and we all dropped our coffee cups and then you told Thor that his father wasn't dead and then that big metal thing tried to kill us all." 

Sif frowns and lowers her sword, but she still looks ready to attack. "How is it that you have come to inhabit Thor's body?" 

Jane sighs, struggling to find a way to describe Tony and his failed experiment. "Do you have mad scientists on Asgard?" 

"We have Loki," Sif says.

"That works," Jane says, shrugging. "Some of our scientists were doing an experiment and Thor and I got in the way at the wrong time. His consciousness is in my body; I'm in his. Thor brought us here when our scientists couldn't undo what they'd done." 

Sif looks at her suspiciously, but the sword wavers a bit. "Should you not be with them?" 

"Gamma radiation isn't really my field," Jane replies, and then she points back at the starry expanse of the sky outside. "This, though, this is... this is beyond incredible, I've never seen anything like it. I could publish for the next thousand years and still have articles left to write about what I'm seeing here." 

At that, Sif sheaths her sword, and Jane breathes a sigh of relief. 

"Can I ask you why you decided you trust me?" 

"Loki is an excellent liar," Sif sighs, leaning against the wall near the telescope, "but I doubt he could fake that level of sincerity for something as beautiful as this. Do I recall correctly that you are a magician on your world?" 

"We call it science," Jane says. She sighs and looks back at the stars. "Although I think, looking at all this, that I'm starting to understand why you think they're the same." 

\+ 

She stays in the observatory for most of the day, perfectly content; Sif hangs around for a bit, telling her stories about what Thor was like as a child. Eventually, someone comes to inform her that her presence is requested in the palace, and she hurries back, hoping that it's good news. 

It isn't. 

"What do you mean, you can't fix it?" Jane demands. 

"We offer our sincerest apologies, Lady Jane," one of the magicians tells her, bowing slightly, "but there is nothing we can do for you." 

"We can't be stuck like this forever," she says, and then she presses her hand to her face in horror. "Oh my god, I really will be stuck like this _forever_ , and Thor, you, you'll--" 

"We will find a solution, Jane," Thor promises, gripping her hand. 

\+ 

Jane spends most of the day after they return from Asgard coaching Thor on her presentation for the conference, just in case. 

"This isn't working," she sighs, after the sixteenth time Thor birdwalks off into a recounting of a battle on some distant realm. 

"I am sorry," he says, heaving a sigh of his own. "Perhaps it is best that you go after all." 

"Maybe," she says. "Come on, let's go find some food. I need a break." 

They head to the Tower's main kitchen, where they find Tony, who is, unexpectedly, cooking.

"I haven't figured you out yet," Tony says, pushing a couple of plates at them, "but I can still make a mean omelette." 

"Thank you, my friend," Thor says. "This looks excellent." 

Clint comes in just as they're finishing up and nods at the three of them before he starts rummaging in the cabinets.

"Hey," Clint says, tearing into a bag of chips. "You look entirely too serious. Who died while I was gone? Wait, shit, did somebody actually die?" 

"Jane and I have switched bodies," Thor explains, and Clint takes a step back, staring. 

"Damn," he says, looking between the two of them. "You did, didn't you? So, how long does this last?" 

"That's-- that's to be determined," Tony says. 

"You mean you can't fix what you did," Clint chuckles. 

"I mean that I haven't fixed it _yet_ ," Tony clarifies. "So unless you have any brilliant pioneering ideas in the field of gamma radiation--" 

"Why don't you just use that blue gem that was in Loki's Staff of Mind Whammys?" Clint asks, popping a handful of chips into his mouth. "Seems like that could be put to better use in the right hands." 

"There's no way that would--" Jane starts to say, but then she frowns and looks over at Tony. "We need to see the readings you took of that stone." 

"Already halfway there, Doc," Tony says, shouting, "thanks, Robin Hood," as he heads for the lab, Thor and Jane following quickly behind. 

+

The next morning, Jane wakes early. She has to fly to Munich, where she has to pretend to be her own research assistant, because Clint's bright idea had quickly turned out to be yet another dud. She stumbles out of bed and heads for the bathroom, but instead of stumbling through the open door, which should be directly across from Thor's side of the bed, she smacks into the wall. 

"Ow!" 

"Jane?" Thor says blearily. "Are you all right?" 

"No, ow, my god, that hurt," she says, hopping around on one foot. The pain in her toe is incredible, like all the pain tolerance of Thor's body has just disappeared, and suddenly she realizes that Thor's question to her had been in his own voice. "Oh my god, Thor, that _hurt_ , and my _voice_ , I have my voice back," she says, hurrying to turn on the light. "It worked!" 

Thor claps his hands together triumphantly and beams at her. "Excellent! How shall we celebrate?" 

"I have to be on a plane to Munich in two hours," she says, but she's already crawling back onto the bed, enjoying the comforting feeling of being back in her own body and the way it feels next to his. 

"You should take some time to readjust to your body," he says, kissing her cheek. "For...science." 

Jane laughs and settles against him. "Fifteen minutes," she says, yawning as she curls into the warmth of Thor's body and closing her eyes. "For science."


End file.
